has come!"

Trembling, and with tottering limbs, he dragged himself to the little
gate opening into the gardens of the Chalusse mansion. Soon it softly
opened, and Madame Leon appeared. Ah! it was not she that Pascal had
hoped to see. Unfortunate man! He had been listening to that mysterious
echo of our own desires which we so often mistake for a presentiment;
and it had whispered in his heart: "Marguerite herself will come!"

With the candor of wretchedness, he could not refrain from telling
Madame Leon the hope he had entertained. But, on hearing him, the
housekeeper recoiled with a gesture of outraged propriety, and
reproachfully exclaimed: "What are you thinking of, monsieur? What!
could you suppose that Mademoiselle Marguerite would abandon her place
by her dead father's bedside to come to a rendezvous? Ah! you should
think better of her than that, the dear child!"

He sighed deeply, and in a scarcely audible voice, he asked: "Hasn't she
even sent me a reply?"

"Yes, monsieur, she has; and although it is a great indiscretion on my
part, I bring you the letter. Here it is. Now, good-evening. I must go
at once. What would become of me if the servants discovered my absence,
and found that I had gone out alone----"

She was hurrying away, but Pascal detained her. "Pray wait until I see
what she has written," he said, imploringly. "I shall perhaps be obliged
to send her some message in reply."

Madame Leon obeyed, though with rather bad grace, and not without
several times repeating: "Make haste!"--while Pascal ran to a street
lamp near by. It was not a letter that Marguerite had sent him, but
a short note, written on a scrap of crumpled paper, folded, and not
sealed. It was written in pencil; and the handwriting was irregular and
indistinct. Still, by the flickering light of the gas, Pascal deciphered
the word "Monsieur." It made him shudder. "Monsieur!" What did this
mean? In writing to him of recent times, Marguerite had always said, "My
dear Pascal," or, "My friend."

Nevertheless, he continued: "I have not had the courage to resist the
entreaties made to me by the Count de Chalusse, my father, in his last
agony. I have solemnly pledged myself to become the wife of the Marquis
de Valorsay.

"One cannot break a promise made to the dying. I shall keep mine, even
though my heart break. I shall do my duty. God will give me strength and
courage. Forget her whom you loved. She is now the betrothed of another,
an